Pages

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

In the past 24 hours or so many of you will have seen images of deadly flash floods in Toowoomba in Queensland, with 9 confirmed dead and 59 people missing.

First of all I need to say we live around 1300 kilometres from Toowoomba two states away, so Deb, Lu and myself are safe and well having made our way home from Tassie on Sunday night. My older girls E and Io are also safe, more about that in a moment.

However, the floods have struck pretty close to home for me.

I have occasionally said I am originally a Queenslander, well Toowoomba used to be my home town. The images of the floods are all from areas I know intimately, it is quite sobering to see a place you have fond feelings for ripped to pieces.

Back to my older two E and Io. Because of our ties to Queensland our “big girls” went on a road trip before Christmas.

Their destination - Toowoomba.

I found out about the floods through a phone call from E yesterday afternoon. She warned me that we would hear terrible news about Toowoomba in the evening. She was getting in first to let us know that she and her sister are safe so we wouldn’t have to worry.

They are staying at a friend’s house that is well above the floods.

The only slight issues are: they are cut off in Toowoomba, all roads out of the town are still cut; they have to boil water before drinking it because of contamination fears; and there is no bread or milk left in the remaining shops.

17 comments:

I've been watching the news closely. It is truly surprising - I've always assumed floods come gradually, like the one we recently had in Yass. And thought the only fatalities were people making mistakes trying to cross flooded roads or kids being silly in the water and ending in tragedy. This came so fast, like a huge gush of water.Glad your girls are safe and hope they are keeping high spirits, it would be an emotional event to go through.

It's been terrible watching this on the telly! I do have my sister and her kids in Queensland - it's ok, they're safe - but it's such a worry especially as the flooding doesn't seem to be receding at all!!!

I've been watching the news with growing horror and much sympathy. We know something about floods here in Cumbria. I'm so glad your daughters are safe Al. My heart goes out to all those people who have lost their homes, their livelihoods and worse.